Friday, June 16, 2017

You Can Have Self Confidence – If You Can Count to Four – 02

You Can Have Self Confidence

I am wondering if you would like to have more self-confidence, and would like to get rid of all your feelings of inferiority? Well, that is exactly what is going to happen, provided you are sincerely interested and will follow a few suggestions.

It seems that most everyone has a degree of feeling of inferiority. So don’t feel so exclusive about your complexes. You have lots of company. At the same time, most everyone feels very confident about certain things. Certain things, about which they have learned enough, so that they feel that they are an authority. All this proves that each of us has the capacity to feel confident as well as inferior. We feel confident when we understand the whole truth about something, and we feel inferior, when we do not know the whole truth.

Webster defines the word inferiority as a person experiencing a feeling in a lower state.

In other words, by feeling that somebody else is better than he is, he is comparing himself with this other person. This is not a fair comparison. No two persons are the same. The very word individual suggests that each one of us is different from every other person. We do not look the same as anyone else. We have a different shaped nose, face, head, body, and we have a different design as to what our life’s purpose is.

We were designed to function as an individual. We are not to be compared with any other person, but we should appreciate our individual design and learn to be ourselves.

We should learn to express our own individuality well.

The one great Creator of the universe has infinite intelligence. Infinite intelligence means unlimited, incomprehensible, inexhaustible, wisdom, knowledge, and power.

The universe is designed, powered and governed by this all powerful, all knowing, all loving Creator. This indescribable creator knows that it takes thousands of different types of individuals to render all the many different services needed to operate the world harmoniously, so he created thousands of different types of people. There are thousands of men who just love to serve as undertakers. Other thousands of men who like to run grocery stores. Others who like to sell and deal with people. Others, who like to be statesmen and run our government.

Why this great intelligence, which runs the universe, has it arranged that should the one and only undertaker in some little town in western Nebraska gets killed in an auto accident, in three days, there would be several other undertakers competing for the opportunity to serve in his place.

Did you ever wonder how it is possible for every city and community in the world, based upon its population, to have just the right number of doctors, lawyers, merchants, plumbers, carpenters, ditch diggers, ministers, salesman, nurses, lawnmower repairers, waiters, cooks, mechanics, etc.? Why is it that just so many persons trained to render each type of service live in each community?

That happens because each of us is especially designed to serve well in some channel. We develop our abilities to serve in our particular channel, and then seek a place where such services are needed.

When we find our channel, the channel for which we were especially created, we will find that we are very happy serving in that channel. We will feel harmonious and happy, and we will express life beautifully. We will be healthy and prosperous because we will find that we will be able to render a quality and a quantity of service to humanity. We will have faith in ourselves and will not be comparing ourselves with other people who were designed to serve in a different channel than ourselves.

You will pardon me if I share a personal experience with you. I was raised in a family of 14 children. There are 12 of us living at present. Most of my life, I suffered terribly from a feeling of inferiority. I did not understand why other people could have so many desirable things and be playing seemingly such an important role in life. And I seemed to be stuck with wearing hand-me-downs, and plowing with a walking plow all my life. I felt inferior to every boy who wore better clothes than I did. I felt inferior to every boy or girl who could stand up before the student body and speak with poise and confidence.

I could not do that when I was a senior in high school. I felt inferior to every boy and girl who seemed to feel at ease at the socials, which I attended during my school years, because I came from the sticks and looked and dressed like a hayseed. During those years, I did not understand the real foundation of life. I did not know what was important and what was unimportant.

But looking back, I can see many things about those years, which turned out to be blessings in disguise. Two things I will mention.

One, these conditions stirred within me a burning desire to learn the truth about life and to be successful.

Two, since I did not have the clothes, the money, and the confidence, so that I was invited to the many social activities, I took my borrowed books and went home and did the chores and studied each evening until bedtime. Consequently, I learned to study and made good grades. I learned the value of knowing the truth about that which I was studying.

My confidence gradually grew and grew, as I learned the truth about the universe and its various laws. It has been my privilege to take all these wonderful discoveries out into the test tube of life and prove them. Now, I know that each person can discover that channel for which he was especially designed and learn to express a large measure of happiness, health and prosperity.

I would like to introduce a wonderful word to you, which will mean a great deal to your happiness. The word is “consciousness.” It means the sum total of all your beliefs.

Add up every thought or idea which you have ever accepted as true and that adds up to your state of beingness or consciousness.

If you have accepted thoughts in the past which are not true, regarding who you are and what your relationship to other people is, then you have a consciousness of inferiority. You have that consciousness because you have accepted certain untrue things as though they were true.

If you knew the truth about yourself you would not feel inferior, but you would jump up and down and shout. You would know that your Creator is richer than Henry Ford, and he is smarter than Einstein, and he is constantly looking after you day and night. You would know that you are very important.

Now, how does one change his consciousness from a consciousness of inferiority to a consciousness of confidence in one’s self. We must learn who we are and that we have an important role to play in the game of life.

We must realize that we are indispensable channels of service to humanity. That we have both a conscious mind in a subconscious mind and that we reason both deductively and inductively, which I choose to call the “A” type and “B” type of reasoning. The “A” type means that we can investigate before we accept it as true, the “B” type means that we can accept it on the assumption that it is true.

We must be aware that by virtue of the fact that our Creator created us with these marvelous faculties, he has a definite job for us to do.

This great life force surges through us 24 hours of every day. It is powerful. We have the ability to direct it into any design we choose. We can neglect to direct it and it is like a great river out of its channel. It tends to destroy everything in its course. But if it is harnessed, it can take electrical power to the millions. This great life force is even more powerful than the river when it is directed.

Down through the ages, men and women with vision and faith have directed this terrific force, and as a result, we have our modern way of life.

Recently it was my pleasure to visit Hoover Dam. Needless to say, I enjoyed the visit very much. But I marveled at the scope of its structure. The size and the color of the men who conceived it and believe din it enough to build it. Then, the great Colorado River, instead of wasting its mighty energies, was captured and used to supply water for starving acres, by the thousands, as well as to provide electrical power for Southern California. Also, Lake Mead, which is the largest man-made lake in the world, provides recreational facilities for thousands each season.

Did you ever sit in your car and wait for a train to pass? Did you ever let your imagination take you back to the time before the first railroad and listen in on one of the first board meetings where some men of vision and faith were trying to persuade the others that they could build a steel track all the way across the country?

Can you imagine just how difficult it was to get the men, who lack the vision, to see how it would be possible, for 70 to 80 cars, weighing hundreds of tons, loaded with tons of freight, to travel across thousands of miles of terrain, through the cities, at perhaps 50 to 70 miles per hour? It took great faith and vision to develop our railroads. Today, there are men who have faith that in just a few years, we will be flying across the country in 3 to 4 hours in large transport planes.

Some believe that we will be communicating with each other without the aid of an electronic instrument in a few years. In other words, we will learn how to tune in on each other, at will, and talk to each other, without the aid of any device. Maybe so, maybe not, but it is no more fantastic than those who believed in television 20 years ago.

We could talk at length about the great (so-called) men and women of history who have practiced great faith but I am particularly interested in the millions of people who are suffering from misunderstanding of life and are not enjoying life because of a feeling of inferiority.

I want the housewife to know that she is filling the most important need in the world. I want her to know that she was designed to be a good wife and mother and that to be a good wife and mother is the greatest profession in the world.

I want to challenge every wife and mother in the world to assume a feeling of genuine importance and to know how needed they are. Fill our minds with the thoughts of who you really are and how important you are.

The purpose of life is to live.

To live is to express.

To express is to be what you want to be and to do what you want to do and to have what you want to have.

There is an abundance of everything you could desire in the universe.

There are laws or rules of making available all the things you desire.

So all you need to do is to learn the laws and decide what you desire, and then do something about it.

It is your privilege to either say to yourself, “I don’t believe all this” or to say. “I am open-minded and will assume that it is true until I prove it either true or untrue, inasmuch as it is good. If it proves untrue, fine, at least I exposed myself to the possibility of discovering that it was true. If it proves to be true, then I will always know how you feel happy, healthy and prosperous.”

The indescribable abundance of the universe will be yours as you choose to express it, because now you know the truth about it.

Now you know who you are. You know that you are an important individual. You know that you have a special job to do in life. Now, you must neutralize all those false concepts of yourself; the idea that you were not as good as someone else; the idea that you were not as pretty as someone else, etc. The way that you do that is to assume the new premise that you are an exclusive, important individual and feel the new concept so strongly that your new concept becomes a deeper habit pattern in your subconscious than the old ones. Then you will automatically feel confident.

Confidence or faith is based upon knowledge of self. Your knowledge of self now does not justify feeling inferior. It justifies a feeling of real importance. You now know who you are and your relationship to your creator and your fellow men.

Now, you know that you can design your life. You can now decide the type of person you want to be. You can become a person of poise, charm, beauty and confidence.

You can have a beautiful home, car, clothes or anything you desire. You can have these through self-confidence which will make it possible for you to learn the rules of life. All these things come through natural means. You design all these things in the idea form, and then in due time, you will experience them actually.

Each idea has a season, just like each seed in the garden has a season. Do not get the idea that all you have to do is just think. All this is based upon natural laws.

The first thing one must do is to be able to think it in the form of an idea. Then the idea is the seed, which falls into the soil, which is the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind then tells us, from day to day, what form of action is required in order to bring about the fulfillment of our dreams. We will receive this daily instruction in the form of urges and feelings. Our part is to respond, with confidence, and do whatever we are led to do.

Sometimes it takes years to realize our dream and sometimes it takes almost no time at all. Suppose you decide you wanted to build a dam across the Mississippi River, just above New Orleans. You don’t have the money, but you have the well-defined desire.

You start talking about it and pretty soon you begin to make progress, but it takes seven years before the dam is a reality and cars are using the dam as a bridge. But suppose that you want new clothes. You go downtown and buy them today. You can see that one case took seven years and another case took one day or less.

To gain self-confidence, may I suggest some things for you to do.

Read this chapter, each night, before going to sleep for 50 nights.

Attend as many lectures as you can on positive thinking.

Obtain a recording on self-confidence and play it over and over and over as often as possible to yourself.

Cultivate friends who have self-confidence.

Associate, as much as possible, with people who have lots of confidence.

Expose yourself to every possible source of information regarding the study of your mental processes.

You are an individual. You are exclusive. You are important. You are especially designed. You are no smaller or no larger than any other person in the world. You have a special job to do and enjoy and should not compare yourself with any other person in the world.

May I challenge you to dare to dream big dreams for yourself and your loved ones.

You can be anything you want to be and you can have anything you want to have.